The human hole: Problematic representations of trauma in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything is illuminated and Extremely loud and incredibly close

Jonathan Safran Foer’s novels Everything is illuminated and _Extremely loud and incredibly close_ are commonly read as trauma fiction—works that incorporate insights from literary trauma theory. This paper argues that these novels give rise to implications that are difficult to reconcile with that theory. Foer’s signature motif of ‘holes’ alludes not only to trauma but also to post-structural theories of language and a postmodern sense of the absence of an all-synthesising paradigm of truth. By conflating these concepts, his novels evoke an original, structural trauma, which problematises the practical imperative of trauma theory to work through trauma. In its place, as I illustrate, Foer’s novels advance a challenging philosophy of living with inexorable trauma: this ethic, which demands authenticity but discounts healing or selfpreservation, and even apparently endorses suicide, highlights the dangers of ignoring Dominick LaCapra’s warning against confusing absence with loss when talking about trauma.